give a light, airy texture and as a semisolid network of support to give structure to the

baked product.

Eggs are useful in two other ways: they lend their delicate yellow coloring to whatever

you bake with a yellow pigment (xanthophyll) in the yolk and, secondly, they also act as a glue

for breaded foods. When the egg coagulates in the heat (oven or deep-fry oil), a tight adhesion

forms between the food and the breading material.

Coagulation and cooking

Coagulation of the egg is a vitally important process in cookery, important enough that

understanding how it works helps you with your cooking.

When an egg coagulates, the proteins go through a distinct physical process. The raw egg

proteins are long, thin molecules that fold into themselves something like a crumpled-up candy

wrapper. They look like globs under a microscope. Heat adds energy to these globs, and they

begin to unfold. Add more heat, they unfold more and they form a network of long chains, like

spaghetti strands floating in boiling water. If you remove the egg from the heat at this stage, you

have a soft, moist, scrambled-egg-like substance. If you continue exposing it to heat, the

coagulating protein strands entangle and form tight clumps with each other and begin to contract.

The clumps become so stiff and rigid that they cannot hold much moisture. Whatever moisture

the protein strands held they release as steam from your pan, the egg becomes dry and withered.

But you can trick the egg proteins into retaining their moisture while exposing them to very high

heat (see the recipe) through stir-frying.

I discovered stir-fried eggs accidentally when I was visiting a friend in Toronto. In the

early morning when everyone else was still asleep, my friend’s 10-year old daughter, Jenny,

offered to cook a couple of scrambled eggs for me. I love good scrambled eggs, but it takes some

know-how to keep them moist, soft and tender. I was wary but she looked so eager that I could

not refuse the offer diplomatically. She lightly scrambled two eggs in a bowl while, to my horror,

she turned the heat on full blast under a small, heavy skillet. Everyone knows that high heat kills

any chance for moist, soft scrambled eggs.

She let the pan heat for a minute or two until it was very hot—a condition that is true

murder on the eggs’ protein molecules. She splashed a tiny bit of oil into the pan, then added the

eggs all at once while gently stirring. In less than half a minute she spooned the eggs onto my

plate. I could not believe it. They were the best-tasting, most moist and tender scrambled eggs

I’d ever had. I’ve used Jenny’s method ever since.

What Jenny did was to fool the egg proteins. Ordinarily, high heat unfolds the long

protein molecules. With continued heat they clump together, contract and expel most of the

moisture. But with very high heat all they did was unfold. The cooking process was so fast that

the molecules did not have a chance to clump up, and they retained all their moisture.

Stir-fried eggs

Stir-fried eggs are the Oriental scrambled eggs.

Oriental cooks use the same method to stir-fry eggs before adding them to other stir-fried

ingredients, as in egg foo yung.

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